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The Top 10 Free and Open Source Project Management Software for Your Small Business

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Update 5/16/16: This post has been updated with additional free project management software suggestions based on new software and user comments. The list has also been updated to reflect changes to these software options’ features over the past year. We’ve updated the piece to have 10 options instead of the original six.

Even with the best intentions and strategy, a wrong turn can quickly demolish months of work, and a misstep can mean the small-business equivalent of losing San Francisco. Taming this project gone bad can be a horrific task—especially when you have to pay a lot of money to do it.

Fear not.

Small businesses have a variety of possibilities for organizing their projects from the deep. And the best part? All of these options are free.

I’ve compiled a list of the tenbest free project management software applications. Depending on the size of your business, these software solutions cost a total of nothing. Let’s start with number ten.

If you’re concerned about employee time tracking, I’d start with Harvest. This system is great for resource-based project management and reporting. What’s even better is that is has an invoicing system, so you can bill your clients with a click of a button. The free version is definitely made for solopreneurs though — it only allows one user, four clients, and two projects. From there, pricing scales up from $12 a month for unlimited clients and projects.

Harvest also brags that it completely replaces timesheets. Its analytics system is absolutely on point; users feel comfortable doing away with traditional spreadsheets for Harvest’s simple platform.

Finally, Harvest makes billing easy. Already use QuickBooks? You can export your tracked time straight into the system and use it to bill your clients directly.

Cons: The free version is truly more of a trial or for a single user; with all Harvest has to offer in its paid accounts (timesheet approval, multiple users, etc), I can’t imagine many would stay on their free account for long. The mobile apps also do not fully integrate with the desktop version.

Zoho Projects lets you have as many users as you’d like and, apart from a 10 MB limit on storage, doesn’t have any limitations on functionality in the free version. Users have the option to upgrade for $20/month.

Pros

Zoho Projects has a dense list of features and, incredibly, its interface has been compared to the intuitive layout of Facebook. For Waterfall enthusiasts, Zoho Projects has incredible Gantt chart options, allowing users to set complicated tasks and milestones. Zoho Projects also offers timesheets and detailed reporting features (and for those who don’t want to make their own reports, it has 50 pre-made templates to choose from!).

Cons

Free users will miss out on Zoho Projects’ document management system because they are limited to 10MB of storage (the paid version offers 5-30GB, depending on the plan).

Bitrix24 is a project management system entirely free for up to 12 users, with an option to upgrade to more for $99 per month. The features rival those of PM’s current go-to software: BaseCamp.

Pros

Users can choose whether to use Bitrix24 in the cloud or self-host on the company’s own server. The PM features are outstanding: Bitrix24 offers Gantt charts, layered task options, time tracking and management, and even employee workload planning.

Trello uses a method called Kanban, a project management system developed by a former Toyota vice president, Taiichi Ohno, which allows users to move cards—representative of tasks—to create a visual representation of where a project is in development.

Trello offers unlimited users and projects, but only offers 10MB of storage on their free version. Luckily, it’s easy to get Trello Gold–just share and get a new user on board, and you’ll jump up to 250MB for a year. Looking to pay for it? It’s only $5 a month, or $45 for a year.

A quick peek at the alignment of the cards lets users know how far along a project is—and what to work on next. While the front of the card has little more than a task label, the back can be filled with all kinds of information—like who’s working on the task, when it’s due, and what parts of the task have already been completed with a simple checklist. Trello also now offers a calendar function so everyone can collaborate on their projects transparently.

Cons

Because of Trello’s emphasis on simplicity, it’s missing a few key features. There isn’t a good way to look at a project with high detail—for example, it does not offer an option to see task lists broken down by user or due date.

2-Plan Team makes it easy to coordinate with off-campus teams and track time spent on tasks—and it integrates seamlessly with 2-Plan Desktop. Work 2-Gether is similar to Trello in that it uses the Kanban system, but it also has the ability to expand into a greater workchart.

Dustin Moskovitz, the co-founder of Facebook, also designed Asana. True to the aesthetic and simplicity of the most popular social network, Asana is an intuitive task-management system that works best for teams seeking real-time interaction.

Asana allows its users to visualize their goals, track their time, assign priority to their tasks, and get updates on the project right in the program. It also has a calendar function to graph the team’s tasks right onto the dashboard.

In addition, over the past year, it’s added an Android app, the ability to convert a task to a project, conversations, and dashboards. It’s been beefing up–last year, its biggest con was that it didn’t have enough features.

Cons

Asana does not allow offline use. In addition, reviewers feel that “sometimes it is not intuitive enough to find something.”

I discovered MeisterTask when looking up underground free project management tools, and it’s a great little find. It offers unlimited users and projects, has native apps for iPhone and iPad, and gives free users two integrations (like with Dropbox, GitHub, Zendesk and Google Drive).

Pros

MeisterTask has all the important features: it offers time tracking, issue tracking, and collaboration with both internal and external users. There is no storage limit, so exchanging files is hardly a burden on the system’s capacity.

MeisterTask’s project boards are perfectly suited for various agile methodologies. The boards are completely customizable so that teams can create anything from Kanban to Scrum and various mixed forms.

Finally, the layout is just gorgeous to look at. Communication is a breeze–it’s similar to the conversation system on Trello, except with instant updates.

Cons

MeisterTask is still a new-ish project management system, so it’s working on a lot of projects that haven’t been launched yet. This includes:

There is no limit to what you can do with GanttProject. The management platform allows users to quickly create a structured schedule for any project. It offers task assignment and milestone implementation. The open-source software also enables project managers to identify problem areas in the workflow so that companies can set goals for improvement.

Cons

I would not recommend GanttProject to people who are unfamiliar with project management software. Many have found it overwhelming—and support is largely left to its forums.

Orange Scrum offers the best locally-hosted, free project management software for IT teams. It provides the groundwork for agile software development and resource management. The on-premise version costs $0, whereas the cloud version (which is admittedly far more supported) starts at $9 a month.

Pros: Orange Scrum is completely customizable. If you have tech teeth, you can basically make this free PM software whatever you would like it to be.

Cons: Because Orange Scrum is so versatile, serious coding knowledge is required to make the most of this tool. It is not a program for beginners.

Freedcamp is great for businesses who want to be able to scale with their project management software; the free version will last your company for a long while, and upgrading is cheap, cheap, cheap. For example, add-on components range from $2.99 for GoogleDrive integration to $12.99 for CRM. Storage upgrades are available from $2.49 for 1GB.

The free version can certainly hold its own though.

Administrators can limit different users’ permissions right down to the client level. Freedcamp also offers time tracking, templates, and invoicing.

Its collaboration features are awesome. Users will never be behind because Freedcamp makes sure to add notifications everywhere when there’s an update (and they’re innocuous, like a Facebook notification, so they don’t get in the way). There is no mobile app, but Freedcamp has optimized its website for mobile use.Cons

Reviewers have claimed that there is a small learning curve on site navigation. Others have noted that they are unable to save multiple milestones at once. In addition, there is no mobile app as of now, but the company is planning to launch an app for iOS soon. There are some missing features as well, including Gantt charts, task dependencies, recurrence, and subtasks.

More?

For all of the free options available, many small businesses may want to consider upgrading to paid versions for more users, expanded functionality, and better customer support. Thankfully, most of the leading products are pretty cheap. Smartsheet, for example, offers their Team membership at $39 a month, and Mavenlink offers its basic services for just $4 a month per user.

What free or open-source project management tools have worked well for you? Were there any programs that I didn’t include? Share them in the comments below! Please let me know your recommendations (I’d love to hear from you!) in the comments below!

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About the Author

Rachel Burger

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Rachel is a content manager for Capterra, a free online resource that quickly matches businesses to their software needs. She specializes in construction and project management . She also runs her own blog on content marketing. On the rare occasion Rachel isn't writing, she's reading, hiking, jogging, or spending time with her friends and family.

Comments

Comment by Praveen Malik on June 12, 2014 at 11:02 am

Hi Rachel, A very good compilation of PM tools. I would like to give reference to this article in my blog http://www.pmbypm.com. Please let me know if you think it is not appropraite.

Thanks for sharing. Another app you should take a look at is Kanban Tool (http://kanbantool.com) – visual time management solution that helps teams to track working time and collaborate with other team members.

What about Mantis? is it considered to be one of the list? many people are recommending it.

Comment by Actuate BIRT on August 7, 2014 at 2:51 pm

I wanted to share this information about a new freemium BI reporting and data visualization server available from Actuate: the BIRT iHub F-type. This is a 100% free version of the commercial BI reporting platform, BIRT iHub. Developers working with open source BIRT Designer can use BIRT iHub F-Type to deploy applications and reports instead of building their own infrastructure. It saves developers tons of time and it’s completely free to use (data can be upgraded, but the base amount is ideal for small businesses and enterprises that want to try the platform out free). Developers can use this platform to create any kind of application they want.
Here is more information on the product: http://www.actuate.com/products/birt-ihub-ftype/
Blog post describing how to install it on Windows: http://blogs.actuate.com/introducing-birt-ihub-f-type-installing-on-windows/

This list is very interesting, but the title of this article is WRONG !!!
Britix24, Asanaand and Producteev are only available on SaaS – Where are the sources ? And free versions are very limited…
Only Trello (I like its approach and design), 2Plan and GantProject are real Open Source but they are too limited in PM features to be considered as Top PM tools.
Have a look at what Ganib or ProjeQtOr offer for free to get an idea of what should be a PM Tool.

Thanks for your comment Babynus! To be clear, this lists out some open-source PM software, and some free PM software. They are not all free and open source.

Comment by ManuelBS on August 9, 2014 at 6:44 pm

I want to mention a full featured business management software including a rich project management part that is integrated in all other business related processes like CRM, Invoicing, Reporting and Expense Management. ERPAL is a free Drupal distribution and can be customized in business logic and data structure using all existing Drupal modules. More information to be found at http://erpal.info

Comment by Toni Thenhausen on August 11, 2014 at 6:59 am

Velocity (http://velocity.pm) is designed for the needs of small businesses and freelancers. It provides requirement tracking, creation of quotes and invoices, time tracking and diagramming using draw.io.

Hi Rachel,
So title shoud be “Top 6 Free OR Open Source Top 6 Free and Open Source Project Management Software for Your Small Business”
😉
(sorry, maybe I’m coding too much and analyse boolean expressions everywhere…)

Comment by Babynus on August 12, 2014 at 7:34 am

@ganaysa :
Mantis is not a “Project Management Software” but a “Bug Tracker”.
A very good one indead (I use it professionnaly) but it is not enough to call it a Project Management Tool.

Jibby is the result of thorough analysis of various systems handling common elements such as Projects, Information, Tasks, Deliverables, Events, Meetings, Documents, Costs, Timesheets, Memos, Blogs, Mails and Contacts.

Each and every element carries many common general attributes. The different attributes apply more to some elements then other but in general they overlap so Jibby handles all elements as identical with the exception of element Type.

This approach is the key to simplicity while retaining flexibility. You can change a memo to a task or a meeting to a timesheet with a single mouseclick. You can store Tasks under Deliverables or Delivarables under Tasks depending on how you want to approach your projects.

Any element can be shared with other Jibby members or sent by e-mail to others. Chatting and comments are attributes following each element Entity. The comments are left as a log at each Entity and many assigned users can leave a chatting trail where it belongs.

All Entities can be made public and become a part of a project presentation by applying a domain extention in user settings. No additional programming required. F.ex. this opening page for Jibby is simply public items of the Jibby administrator.

The simplicity of the system further relies on how information are presented to the user. On the left and top you have the filters and controls for what to display on the screen. The center column displays the data you have filtered from your database and the right column holds all the View tools that show your data in various formats. Furthermore; each user can link his e-mail service from various platforms (G-mail for now) at the bottom of filtered data in center column.

The contact manager is extensive and can fully integrate all Google contacts (and also from other major platforms soon) and synchronise Jibby with those platforms.

Jibby is a checklist paradise. A checklist can be created for all Entities and you can use them to monitor the progress or completion of the entity. If there are no checklist items a simple slider identifies the progress.

There are to many features and variations provided by Jibby on this simple but flexible screen to cover here. I urge you to log in and try Jibby. We will continuously improve the system, add features and simplify user interface for convenience and usability.

Jibby is free and will operate as a Freemium application based on user traffic. Try it out..

Comment by Luke Outhred on August 16, 2014 at 6:31 am

Thank you for the article, Rachel 🙂 There’s nothing wrong with the title btw.

I’m taking a Project Management class in college and I found this article very informative. I tend to work smarter and I like to use templates and tools that can get me to my goal quicker and easier. I researched many of these and I want to say that I really appreciate this article. Many articles written along the same lines have almost the same results – not quite, but almost. Thank you for the information. I plan to pass it along to my classmates, too!

Comment by Rafael on August 25, 2014 at 9:28 am

I liked the list of tools, just believe Moovia (http://moovia.com) should be part of this list.
It’s an awesome tool and very easy to use. Best.

Comment by Matoto Technologies on August 28, 2014 at 11:52 am

I have been researching and looking for something like Bitrix24 . I think now i am sorted. Going to let one of our clients test this, Thank you very much Rachel

Comment by Mark Suansing on August 31, 2014 at 8:58 pm

Thank you for sharing this blog. I understand how important it is to have a reliable project management system especially in running a business. Keep it up!

Here’s another recommendation – ClipPod for Google Calendar. Perhaps the simplest of them all, since it converts Google Calendar into a project management tool. We’re using it for a while and it’s worked out quite well for us so far.

Comment by Toni Thenhausen on September 2, 2014 at 7:04 am

Velocity (http://velocity.pm) is a cloud-based all-in-one project management software for small businesses and freelancers. We cover the complete project lifecycle, from requirement tracking, through quote generation to invoicing.

Unlike other open source products, we provide the intuitive UIs and care every pixel. We did evaluate a lot of popular PM tools in the market, and we try to build the tool overcome any unpleasant points we met in our competitive tools. Then we have the tool name MyCollab http://www.mycollab.com

Comment by Beth Riegger on September 10, 2014 at 10:35 pm

Thank you so much for the great list! I’ve also been checking out the others listed in the comments.

I could use some advice, maybe I’m using the wrong words to do my research. What I’m looking for is project management software but I want to be able to share some details with the clients. I don’t want to share every last detail but say I’m waiting on them to advance to the next task or that they can see we are 80% done. I don’t see how that’s possible with the companies suggested? Most of them have been just internal type uses. They are great but just not what I’m looking for exactly.

I hope this makes sense and I appreciate anyone’s input 🙂

Thanks!

Comment by Iulian Ursache on September 21, 2014 at 10:27 am

A fully functional, free, and in many aspects much better than Microsoft Project, project tool is OpenWorkbench. Its resource leveling (named “Autoschedule” in OpenWorkbench) is second to none.

Comment by GJN on September 22, 2014 at 2:49 pm

Hi Rachel, I want to be able to write a task completed in my daily log and have this posted into a project-specific log. In other words, I have a general log of things that I have completed that day, each may be for a different project. Then I have documents for each project. listing items completed for that particular project. I want the completed tasks from my daily log to automatically post to a project-specific log. Do you know if any of the project management applications do this and which one would be best?

Comment by Jono Chatterton on September 23, 2014 at 10:44 am

I thought you might like to know about another free project management tool called Stepsie. It is super simple to use and organises your projects and ideas in one central location.

Excellent list Rachel, it does help identifying which one will best suits to specific needs based on pros and cons you described. Thanks for sharing.

Comment by Rahul on September 27, 2014 at 2:21 pm

Hi Rachel!
Thanks for good list of Project Management software which are freeware. Still I think these software are not upto the mark which is required for civil engineering needs. Is there any free software which will compete MS Project ?
but anyway thanks for good list again! and Best wishes!

Freedcamp https://www.freedcamp.com. It is not open source but free for unlimited users and projects with 50MB free storage for files for now. We will increase file storage next year or remove it entirely.

[…] want to take a more in-depth look at what’s available, Capterra has an awesome post, “The Top 6 Free and Open Source Project Management Software for Your Small Business,” to help you choose among the multitude of software options […]

I’ve used years trying to find a project management software that’s both good looking and affordable. Lately I’ve been using Jira from Atlassian, which isn’t free (but not expensive either). I opted for a cloud account, since it seem to both require a lot of system resources and the self-hosted version seems to be a pain to install (at least it was at the time I signed up). Jira Cloud has one MAJOR drawback though: Atlassian’s server is paaainfully slow. Infact, it’s so slow that I find it impossible to use for day-to-day project management. Also, it doesn’t really support different date formats (we use DD/MM/YYYY in Norway). When I select a start or due date, it get the months all wrong (i.e.: 10/00/2014). Today, a message from Atlassian even popped up with the date 16/35/2014. Go figure…

Anyway, I’ve given up on Jira. This week I stumbled upon OpenProject, which is free, open source and has a really nice GUI. So far it seems to have most of the functions I need, and it has everything I need. Anyone looking for free, open source project management software should take a look at OpenProject: https://www.openproject.org/

Comment by Project.net Team on December 17, 2014 at 5:55 am

Hello All,
Project.net is a leading open source Project Portfolio Management solution with a focus on collaboration. Project.net empowers your entire organization to participate in authoring rich, continuously updating project records that are readily accessible, easy to update, transparent,
and actionable.

Thank you very much for such an interesting article!
At the moment, I’m considering a purchase of Comindware Tracker (http://www.comindware.com/tracker/). Have you heard anything about it? And if so, would you recommend it in comparison to other alternatives?

Best regards,

Michael

Comment by Verslo Valdymo Sistemos on January 2, 2015 at 2:13 am

Hey Rachel,

it was pleasure to read this article. It gave me a lot of new information.

Regards,

Verslo Valdymo Sistemos

Comment by Torsten Kelsch on January 3, 2015 at 6:44 pm

Hi Rachel,

good list of project management tools, thank you.

I used TaskFreak! (the multi user version) for several years, because it is easy to use. But it is not being developed any longer as a standalone software, only as a WordPress plugin. See http://www.taskfreak.com/

Comment by asad on January 4, 2015 at 5:36 am

Just exactly i was looking for. I tried trello but was looking for some more asthetic tool. Thanks for effort and sahring

Comment by Eva Munro on January 6, 2015 at 6:43 pm

Thank you for the article. It was helpful and informative. And so are all the comments with suggestions for other platforms. I am looking for a project management platform that will be geared towards a small group /startup that will be designing an app with some high creatives/but slightly technophobic members . What do you or anyone recommend ?? It needs to be ultra simple, highly intuitive and visual but with the ability to add longer tasklists and more info behind a very easy to grasp workflow representation. Thank you !

Comment by Rthakare on January 7, 2015 at 1:53 pm

Hi,

i am a manager at engineering lab and looking for a software that can put multiple projects for one person. I have 5-6 people working in lab bd would like to put each of their project on timeline. Is there any software that has capability of doing that.

Thanks for the list, however most of the softwares are not free unfortunately. A software is not free if the number of users are limited. For example if the limit is 15, there is no guarantee that the next version of the software allows only 5 users. Just a little modification in the Terms of Use, and you have to find and use a new project management software which takes too much time…

Comment by Arijit Chatterjee on January 14, 2015 at 12:26 pm

I have a small software company and work on different projects and different items everyday. After using few project management tools we moved to SPM Live (https://www.spmlive.com). It is a smart and simple tool. The All Projects page and Time Line are the of this software.

Uninstalling 2-plan desktop doesnt work, it just opens the application. Nothing in documentation about uninstall.

Comment by Mo W on February 2, 2015 at 4:28 pm

Thanks Rachel! I was using Leankit.com but after the trial period was over the free edition just wasn’t enough. I just checked Trello out and its the same Kanban system and its great! You just saved me with this article!

How can you select Producteev as the top planning software. They lack the most basic and crucial requirement for any planning tool – Task Dependency! How can I create a plan without task dependency?

Comment by Jessica on February 5, 2015 at 6:37 am

Hi, Rachel,

You’ve compiled a useful list. In fact I liked it so much that I mailed it to a friend who runs a small business in Germany who isn’t in favor of open source. Her argument: “Who do you turn to in a contingency?” Do these open source tools come with robust support, comparable to Basecamp, Dynamics, and Talygen?

Thank you!

Comment by Adriana Trejo on February 10, 2015 at 5:43 pm

Hello Rachel! Thankyou for the article, I am a Civil Engineering student and I was wondering if you could recommend me one of the options you shared particularly for Construction Management. I would aprecciate it very much! MS Project is too expensive for me as a student right now.

Comment by Natan Goshen on February 12, 2015 at 2:56 am

HI Rachel, What about dapulse ?
I heard that they are the best for growth companies , what do you think ?

Comment by dave honness on February 16, 2015 at 12:48 pm

I’m finding myself overseeing a $75,000 project at our church which has several tenecals (so) and 10teams of volunteers. What we need is something that keeps us on track but (very important) can communicate the progress to all the volunteers via email!. Grateful for your research and skill!.

[…] Click here for Capterra’s remaining top three picks plus their complete review, including pros and cons of each! […]

Comment by Max R on February 17, 2015 at 6:12 pm

I’ve just gotten interested in using Basecamp but am curious: does anyone know about their security? Have they ever experienced a hack or security breach? Thanks so much!

Comment by John William on February 23, 2015 at 12:06 am

Nice List !

Here is another web-based tool that you may consider i.e. Invoicera. It is designed for the needs of small businesses and freelancers and provides task and project management, time tracking, invoicing, expense tracking and reporting. It helps in increasing the productivity at work.http://www.invoicera.com

Comment by C Hammond on February 24, 2015 at 4:18 pm

Thanks for this helpful article – however, I tried using the agile mindmap function in “to-do.2-plan.com” (work2gether) based on your review – and found this utterly useless! I built a whole project activity workflow stream on the free sheet – using Apple Mac – only to find that then you cannot scroll across the page, so it is impossible to view it! – so this programme gets a resounding raspberry from me! Back to the drawing board.. as I need mindmapping, I have decided to try using MindGenius.. any other suggestions (mac friendly) most welcomed?! Thanks again for this useful article & discussion forum

Comment by Joe Logan on February 25, 2015 at 1:13 pm

Very good comparison. We will be using Trello – a decision made without me – and wonder how the data is stored for a project. That way I can build the features on that Trello does not have. Anyway, thank you for the informative article. Very helpful.

Comment by Art Kinkade on February 26, 2015 at 6:15 pm

Well written article, very through and very helpful!

Comment by Josie on March 8, 2015 at 1:03 am

Wow, after spending countless hours and nights trying to find something in google to work for me from sheets to tasks, AND getting no where, I finally found this gem. I would like to truly thank you for this article, but you should have started with #1 since it was the only free product of any use. Its not 100%, and closer to 92% but its darn better than anything else and I can hit the sack now. I would add as a con that there are limitations and I wish I could view total time spent on a task. But that’s small beans. Also, Its easy to click on the wrong things, and you have to hit refresh to see some things appear. But, you just can’t beat free. Tinkling with it more in the morning, but it checks all of the right buttons. Superb! Highly recommend 1. Producteev.

Comment by Jennifer Rose on March 8, 2015 at 4:36 pm

Hi – I just found an update to Trello – It has a Calendar function now, through their ‘Power-up’ feature. So, now you can see when items are due on the calendar. (Glad they have it cause I was going to look elsewhere!)

Hi Rachel – very nice article and comments. Could any one suggest a PM software that generates Powerpoint presentations that communicate project characteristics, status, issues, etc? The reason is that I need to communicate upwards using Powerpoint presentations and it takes too much time to do it. Thanks!

Comment by KevinS on March 25, 2015 at 9:05 am

Hi I’m not seeing where bitrix or many other similar software is totally free at all. I see a lot of free trials. Where on bitrix site does it say up to 12 users entirely free? I see a 2 month trial…

Hi! For those of you looking for a fully free and premium project management tool – check out ProjectToolBelt (www.ProjectToolBelt.com). It is fully free for unlimited users, and unlimited projects . Costing and budgeting allows you to compare estimated and actual costs and time. Check out the features at http://www.projecttoolbelt.com/free-project-management-software-features.

[…] shows how I’ve color coded various elements to indicate which person is taking the lead. This article has some great […]

Comment by S Jain on April 21, 2015 at 3:15 pm

I like Asana. Have been using it for years to manage business as well as personal work. These software are great. Do you now any project management software that have an intuitive design?

Comment by Shlomo Silverman on May 1, 2015 at 9:48 pm

I just need /want a small PM tool to install on my laptop to keep track of projects and expenses on my acreage. I don’t need web based, because I live in the middle of the fields with no internet. Listing tasks and priortizing them, attaching costs and hours, scheduling the times to do them ( eg. planting the tomato crop and cultivating the fields).
Your suggestions are valuable. Thanks in advance.

Comment by David on May 5, 2015 at 1:26 am

Would love to put BizFirst’s Plan First on your list (planfirst.bizfirstonline.com)

Comment by niti ranka on May 5, 2015 at 7:13 pm

Hi! I would like to introduce you all to this web based project management tool called Framebench (www.framebench.com) . Framebench is a cloud-based communication and feedback platform that acts as a central workplace where you can store and share your creative assets. The tool is developed to ease the workflow specially of the digital agencies, design firms and their clients.

Since inception, Framebench has been diversifying its features. Below are some of its advanced features :

1. Gmail Extension: Framebench as an extension helps to preview & annotate Gmail attachments without downloading. (http://www.framebench.com/mail-markup/ )
2. Table-Top Sync: Whether you’re changing the presentation slides, zooming into a high resolution image, or annotating an important video frame, This feature makes sure everyone online watch this activity as it happens.
(http://www.framebench.com/tabletop-sync/ )
3. Version Management: This feature flips through file versions like magazine pages. It helps in tracking versions using intuitive magazine page like flipping. This feature enables you to have your iterations neatly documented automatically.( http://www.framebench.com/version-management/ )
4. Video Collaboration: You can easily collaborate on videos with your team with this feature. With everyone in sync, you can give your feedback on each frame of the video and discuss every detail. (http://www.framebench.com/video-collaboration/ )

Comment by Sally on May 19, 2015 at 7:45 am

Really disappointed, having sold Asana to my director and set about populating with all our projects – I found it is limited to three projects on the free version! I’m relocating to Producteev, which seems simpler and has not ask or project limitations (we only need this for two team members).

Thanks for the resource though, Rachel, though I expected they were not that generous being the makers of fb and all!

Thanks for this informative content Rachel. All these software are good,and i would like to suggest one more. You can check it here: https://www.protacto.com/
This is also a one point solution for project work management.

Comment by Stavridou Helen on May 21, 2015 at 5:26 am

Really Interesting list! I am currently looking for a Project Management tool and that list really helps! I am testing Comidor at the moment, which is not listed here but I will totally take a look at your suggestions! Thanks a lot!

Comment by Gaganjit singh on May 22, 2015 at 2:46 pm

This is a good list of project management tools, below are some tools which I use in order to collaborate with remote as well as inhouse teams for better productivity:

For Project Management: I used to stand firm behind Asana, but I now love how simple Trello (www.trello.com) makes my life!
File Collaboration & Reviews: Framebench (www.framebench.com) is a simple tool which gets me through annotating on various files I receive and keep all my discussions with the freelancer organized.
For messaging: I usually stick to email and sometimes the message center here. Has anyone tried out Slack/Hipchat?
Voice Calls: Skype!!

Comment by Warren Rohrer on May 26, 2015 at 4:56 pm

Rachel,
is there a straightforward PM program that includes integrated schedules, cost tracking, estimates and more?
Warren Rohrer

Comment by Abby on May 28, 2015 at 5:11 pm

Great and helpful notes.
Had a hard time trying to choose the best option, they are all practical .
Question: based on our activities: Cargo handling, my main need is to keep alert for arrivals, which would you reccomend? Thanks

Comment by Sumathi Umapathy on June 9, 2015 at 9:33 am

Hello Rachel,
Here’s another great web based free product – http:://www.freeprojectmanagementsoftwarepro.com
It helps you manage teams, projects and task allocation, costing and budgeting, task dependencies and scheduling easily. It also has Document sharing and project approvals and helps teams collaborate and update progress status easily. Great features search capabilities makes it a cut above the other free products in the market.

Cheers,
Sumathi

Comment by Benjamin Dauton on June 10, 2015 at 1:27 am

Hi,

Great article ! As a free & open source tool, Tuleap really does a great job, especially in a Sccrum or Kanban management, you should have a look at it.

which tool is best for enterprise PM which support MS project importing, pipline, AD integration, Portfolio reporting etcc.

Comment by Ms. Keza on July 5, 2015 at 11:09 pm

I agree – the title is wrong. I was disappointed when I realised that they were not all open source software. Please change it to “Free OR Open Source”.

It’s still a useful list, just not what I wanted.

Comment by Tammie delaBarre on July 9, 2015 at 1:11 pm

I’d like to give a shout out to Vincent from slingshot Data labs. for real estate and investment real estate, it is a nice platform that allows users to link between tasks, properties, opportunities, and deals. And you can assign tasks to team members with due dates.

Comment by Big Data And Analytics on July 30, 2015 at 3:22 am

It’s a good blog to learn open source project management tools. I agree that Bitrix24 is one among the best. But is a little bit complicated to master and use at day2day life. There is no Issue Tracking … and so for managing bugs and customers feedbacks….. i want to give you some good information about Big Data And Analytics.

Love Hansoft! I did look at it for this post, but with its limits on users and customer service it didn’t make the cut. 🙁

Comment by Garry Abrams on September 1, 2015 at 1:55 am

Nice List But U have missed the “Protacto” Free Project Management Software. Please add this Project Management Software in your blog Because We can easily used for tracking, scheduling and planning the work using Protacto. If you need more information about Protacto. Visit Here: https://www.protacto.com

Comment by Jigs Gaton on September 1, 2015 at 12:18 pm

Cool list Rachel, and a good read. If you don’t mind, I’ll just can my powerpoint slide here: http://www.pcatww.com/training/power-to-plan/ and have the participants just read this web page 🙂 I do MS Project training, and feel it only fair that all know about the alternatives to that (even though I would never use anything you cited in real life). And was Wrike left off the list because it was there every 4 paras anyway? Ha. I actually thought Wrike was pretty good, and was my favorite online tool for awhile. But now I’m hooked on OmniFocus 2, with the MS Project connection. If they ever throw in collab features there, it may blow everything else out of the water… dunno, I just think it’s keen. But back to work, lots of overdues on calling me from my personal MS Project Server 🙂

Comment by Colin DeGuire on September 1, 2015 at 3:36 pm

Assembla (https://www.assembla.com) should be added to this list. Agile based project management software that combines some of the best features of Basecamp and JIRA. Project spaces are free as long as the project is public. To create private spaces, you need to pay. My company uses Assembla to manage 100+ on going projects.

Comment by Kim Jonassen on September 2, 2015 at 3:14 am

Great blog post!

Does anyone know if some of these tools has a task import (from xls) function?

Comment by Birthe Lindenthal on September 2, 2015 at 10:22 am

Hi Rachel,
Thanks for the recent updates. This list can be just endless… I’m director of the OpenProject Foundation, guiding the development of the free and open source software OpenProject (https://www.openproject.org/). It’s a great open source tool for project collaboration with an active and enthusiastic community, rapidly evolving. Have a look and share your option.
Cheers
Birthe

Comment by Thomas Carney on September 4, 2015 at 3:54 am

Redmine is the biggest open-source project management software out there, so I was surprised that it wasn’t on the list.

It’s particularly popular in big tech companies, but it’s also used in the construction industry and manufacturing.

In contrast to free project management tools, open source tools such as Planio means that you’re not locked into one vendor. You can simply hit export and walk away with your data, which you then host yourself.

Closed-source vendors sometimes offer json or csv exports, but you then have to find a tool to import that into anther tool, and you don’t always get a 1:1 match.

Comment by Mary Myronova on September 7, 2015 at 6:54 am

Hi Rachel,

Thanks for this review.

Having used various tools for our project management needs, we always came across the same problems, namely: yet another Cloud storage, yet another set of users, yet another system in addition to the already beloved-by-us Google apps.

We already had all our users and all our documents in Google. We didn’t want to duplicate anything. So we decided to create a tool which fit our needs and called it Projects. (http://projects.tm)

Our main idea is that we don’t try to do anything which is already covered by Google Apps. Projects does the things that Google Apps doesn’t do – project and task management.

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Comment by Rachel Dinsmore on September 16, 2015 at 8:46 am

I started with Zoho and was pretty disappointed. It will only allow one project at a time. I used 140k of space for one project and that apparently is the limit. If I only had one project going at once, why would I need project management software? Who can’t keep up with 1 task list for 1 project? I guess you get what you pay for.

Comment by Francis on September 21, 2015 at 7:00 am

Great review, I am going through the list.
I however would like to make a comment, it looks like some applications are TO DO list management or Task management with collaborative flavors but not Project Management which includes dependencies, cost, deviation, milestones, etc management.
I might not have understood all about Asana, but my feeling is that it is more a Task managaer than a Project Management tool.
Thanks,
Francis

Comment by Francis on September 21, 2015 at 8:10 am

In this list, the only free and serious Project Management tool I found is GanttProject.
That’s something closer to Microsoft Project Standard and truly free.
It is Java based and not HTML / Web.
Again, I am a bit disapointed by the list as many of these supposed Project Management tools above are TO DO list or Task management which is really not what is needed when you are managing a project with a target delivery date.

Comment by Prerana chandratre on September 23, 2015 at 11:12 pm

Hey Rachel,
Thank u so much for this overview!!
It helps me in ma project and report…..!

Comment by Yousif Elbadri on October 7, 2015 at 1:33 am

A lot of thanks dear Rachel, it is great and highly appreciated effort.

Comment by Jonathan Taroco on October 15, 2015 at 6:50 pm

Where is Redmine?

Comment by Johannes Jacob on October 16, 2015 at 7:29 am

Another good project management tool is Nifty ( https://www.heynifty.com/ ). A place for students to keep track of their work when collaborating in groups. It provides an overview of who’s doing what and let you share links and files from your favourite productivity tools.

It is quiet similar to Trello, but more customized for the needs of students and for free.

Comment by Mathi on October 27, 2015 at 9:43 am

Hi Rachel,
Thank you for trying Zoho Projects. We do allow more than one Project. Right now you face the limit as you are in our free plan, which is used mainly for evaluation. You can create more projects in other plans. For instance, you can have an unlimited number of projects and 30 GB of space in our enterprise plan. We would be glad to provide free limited period access to the same, just send a mail to support@zohoprojects.com.

Thanks.

Comment by Sean Harrison on October 30, 2015 at 2:09 pm

Re: “…apart from a 10 MB limit on storage, doesn’t have any limitations on functionality in the free version. ” — Dead wrong here, and it cost me some time I didn’t have to spare. There are limits to the total number of groups and projects as well. Couldn’t get enough flexibility out of the service to even give it a try.

Comment by Laura on November 7, 2015 at 3:44 pm

Great starting point for researching project management software options. Thanks for the article and to the commenters for additional resources.

I liked the list of tools, just believe Moovia (http://moovia.com) should be part of this list.
It’s an awesome tool and very easy to use. Best.

Comment by Raissa on January 6, 2016 at 3:29 pm

would love to find a project management tool where you can create a template for repeatable tasks where, if the launch/event/destination date gets changed, you can pick up the entire project as a whole and move it.

Ex. If you are planning an event with a date, with tasks of different durations 6 weeks before the event until a week after. And the date gets changed, it moves to + – the new date. This is Gantt-like, but not always easy in all products that have Gantt or dependency features.

Comment by Touko Akimoto on January 9, 2016 at 10:37 am

All these lists are full of subscription-ware.

Something I will never use.

Even if its free, its a bad idea. You never know when these people sell out or shut down, and then either the free version gets crippled further or disappears, or the entire service is gone.

Thanks, but No thanks. I’d rather stick to Excel and Outlook or some other pay once and then get to decide if you want to upgrade to the next buggy version with changes that may or may not be counterproductive for your way of doing things.

If this sounds cynical to you, it isn’t. Its just based on the reality of software sales and development in an impoverished age where only money matters at the end as a driver of decisions.

Comment by Westernlogan: CAD and 3D Drafting Company on January 11, 2016 at 6:30 pm

Best, Thanks for posting, we were busy in developing OPM for website. but i think it will help us

Thanks for the great article. I am considering one or more tools from your list, however, I’d really appreciate your recommendation for someone who is “newbie” to the PM field? Thanks.

Comment by Vince Cassisi on January 16, 2016 at 2:56 pm

Do you know of free downloadable s/w for planning and cooking a meal? It should be project management based (time dependencies, etc) and have time divisions of minutes.
An example would be:
Dice vegetables-10 minutes, mix ingredients-15 minutes, bake in oven-45 minutes. Meanwhile wash and mix ingredients for fowl – 30 minutes. When vegetables done, add fowl and bake 40 minutes, and so forth. I’ve worked with larger PM s/w with hours and days (I’m a retired Engineer) but can’t find simple s/w for cooking large meals.

Comment by Gianluca Romagnuolo on January 21, 2016 at 12:27 pm

Hi Rachel,
I currently use Asana and I like it because it’s clear, simple, almost complete and I appreciate the several attributes in its filtering/search function respect to other tools. However, I have to say that it doesn’t have a time tracking (except if you pay for a 3rd party plugin) and it doesn’t have priority attribute (except if you consider the due date attribute ).
To organize the work and to have an overview, it’s very good.

Lately, I’ve also seen Teamwork and it seems extremely good if it had a good search function with more attributes. (https://www.teamwork.com/)

Comment by Asikul Alam Khan on January 26, 2016 at 4:22 pm

Thanks. Its work rock!

Comment by Izzy Van Persie on January 26, 2016 at 4:53 pm

Free and open source is great when it comes to bootstrapping a business, or maybe running a one man show, but in my experience, when people aren’t getting paid for their work, the support suffers, and the updating frequency suffers. Volunteers and crowdsourcing can only get you so far.

We have tried almost everything, and like some… hated some.

Our latest is growing on us every day due to its’ powerful, but easy to use set of features.

It’s a full stack of solutions, including CRM, project management, messaging, invoicing, email marketing, internal chat, and more. We can customize it fully to match our brand, from the colors of each part of the app, and the logo.

One monthly payment has replaced four, and we are moving just as fast, with a much smaller financial liability.

Comment by Levani on February 9, 2016 at 4:21 am

Well done not mentioning phabricator at all!

Comment by Omar Salinas on February 10, 2016 at 5:15 pm

Very helpful & well written. I appreciate the Pros & Cons.
I will be trying 2 or 3 of these to see what fits.

Comment by Bethany on February 18, 2016 at 6:18 am

I’m desperately seeking a tool that will help me keep track of supply reordering, even ordered, when it will ship, when it will arrive – so being able to not only see the date but have it on a calendar (that integrates with Google calendar would be awesome) is really criteria.

I’ve been trying Asana but I’m finding that only being able to visually see a max of 3 projects on the dashboard is a turnoff abd why I’m not using it more.

Any suggestions for tools that have a calendar or do they all have that?

Comment by PS on February 21, 2016 at 7:33 am

Hi Rachel
Thanks so much that was ever so informative. I see that you also specialise in construction. Is there any one of these softwares that you would recommend for a small architectural firm (6 staff and growing). We also do interior design projects.
Cheers
PS

Comment by Ed on March 8, 2016 at 7:04 am

This is really helpful, thanks for the list. However, the review of Freedcamp reads more like an advert or even a press release from the company – as a result, I crossed that one off my list straight away (I think I’ll try Bitrix24 first). Can you confirm that it the Freedcamp comments are in fact a genuine review, not “advertorial” content? Thanks.

Hi Ed! Rachel, the author of the article here. No one has compensated me for including them in this article; if you look at the project management software directory, Freedcamp isn’t even one of our paid clients. They do have an impressive features list, which may be why the text sounded like ad copy, but I assure you that they earned their #1 spot.

With that said, Bitrix24 is also a phenomenal solution. You have to fit the software to your company and not the other way around!

[…] written about Bitrix24 a few times before; it’s been named one of the best free project management software options, one for the best project management software for entrepreneurs , and as one of the […]

bitrix24 con: The free account only allows 4 dependency. This makes the software unusable for anyone managing an actual project.

Comment by Gren Gale on April 5, 2016 at 5:56 am

Vendors know what they’re doing when they offer ‘free’ project management software. Most of these packages are designed, quite reasonably, to put all of your project stuff in one place. They have document stores where all of your project documents, spreadsheets, powerpoints etc., as well as your plans will go. The collaboration features of these packages also mean that you’ll be saving all of your review comments and discussion threads and in fact everything to do with your projects in their database. In addition you’ll be training people to use the software, loading all of your resources into the package and also working out a way of making it work for your team/company.

The free versions are offered with limited functionality and numbers of users. The vendors know that before long, after you’ve used one of these tools, you’ll want more users or more functions, at which point they’re confident that you’re going nowhere and they can up-sell to you.

Why are they so confident? Well to move, you’re in for a data migration exercise for a start, moving all that project data from the free tool to another tool and as if that wasn’t bad enough, you’ll have to retrain everyone and set up a new package with your resource data. I’ve worked with customers who have bought packages that they have subsequently discovered are inadequate to their needs and/or overpriced but are so concerned by the work involved in moving that they’ve stayed with what they’ve already got.

No such thing as a free lunch. Free in this market just means free for the moment.

Comment by Jeffrey Faus on April 12, 2016 at 3:55 pm

Great article! We like Zoho, but one feature we would love to have is notifications based on task dependency — i.e. when someone completes a task, the person assigned to the next task is notified. Do any of these other systems do that?

Comment by Pet Froster on April 13, 2016 at 11:09 am

Hi Rachel,
This is a great list, however I think you have missed https://www.agantty.com/en/ . They have been regularly updating their free project management software for the past few months. Maybe just my opinion but its the most sexy software ive seen so far and has a great way of dealing with even huge numbers of projects and tasks via Gantt charts. It lacks some features other tools got tbh but Its REALLY free and still in development.

Comment by Arkadi on April 14, 2016 at 1:17 pm

I agree with several comments here. The title should be “FREMIUM project management software”.
– FREMIUM is when you get a free use but with limits, and if you want to overcome these limits must pay (like most of the “products” seen here).
– OPEN SOURCE is another matter. It is unlimited usage and even if you have the necessary knowledge give you access to 100% of its code to modify it as you wish.

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Comment by priyank agarwal on April 26, 2016 at 3:54 am

Hi Rachel

Your insights are really awesome and i would like you to share your thoughts about Orangescrum which is also an opensource Project Mgmt. tool available free.

Comment by Paulo Jesus on May 2, 2016 at 4:46 pm

Man, Freedcamp is awesome. tks

Comment by Rowena I. on May 4, 2016 at 9:53 pm

Wow, GanttProject worked well for me (for now). So far this is the best tool I was able to use for my project management. Thanks for the list, this was very helpful!

Really an awesome and extensive list. Also check out this app called Zapty. My friend has a small business and this app turned out to be a boon for his organization. It is not only an awesome project management tool but also works great for collaboration with remote teams. You can try out the app only for $29 for this month, they are giving a special offer. Check out more : https://zapty.com/pricing.html

[…] the best online project management training offering from among the abundance available today is not a simple task. […]

Comment by Nepali Blogger Sirish on June 5, 2016 at 1:31 pm

Hi Rachel ! First and foremost thank you very much for such a comprehensive article. I have previously used Asana and Bitrix24. And, boy, these are great arsenal for project management. Now, that you have included so many options here. I am definitely going to check them out. Thanks!

Comment by Karen on June 6, 2016 at 5:09 am

Thank you, Rachel, for this list. As a practicing PM, I agree with such choice as Trello or Asana. These are really perfect solutions for different teams. Trello is the best for small and average (up to 10 people) teams, Asano is perfect for big teams also. But I can’t agree that Ganttchart is good: now there are a lot of visually attractive and simple solutions for project planning. For example, my team i use such gantt chart generator as https://ganttpro.com. In this video you can see how easily you can create a gant charthttps://youtu.be/cIknZJOfCGw

I am starting a new project using dozens of student interns to measure pollution around the USA. Would like to have them have the ability to make entries into their specific sub-project. Your helpful review does not mention the costs and how to manage large numbers of users. I get that many of the offerings are free for a limited number of users – but that is not my future. Advice?

i recomend Asana has been working for me since 2011 and also Producteev is better and not saying others are bad especial those i have never used before

Comment by Freddy on July 28, 2016 at 10:24 am

Rachel, cool list. I’m a freelancer and I’m using MoneyPenny: https://moneypenny.me/en/features. It’s smart tool for small business and freelancer but my most favorite feature is the team time tracking – in real time! I really hope MoneyPenny makes it into your list sometime in the future.

Comment by Anton Perera on July 30, 2016 at 4:31 am

Thanks for the details and articles. It is very helpful.
I think Glip (http://glip.com/) should be in this list too. (just a suggestion 🙂 ). Because it is completely free for,
Unlimited Users
Unlimited Projects
Unlimited Chat and File Sharing
Unlimited Integrations and more..

Comment by Max Zarayan on August 2, 2016 at 8:36 pm

My favorite tools are both missing in your list.
Quickbase by Intuit – it’s a great tool for multi-project, task, issue, schedule tracker. It costs something like $100/user/year, so pretty reasonable and it’s amazingly feature rich and integrates with MS Project, Excel and other databases. Offers API’s to link to the data for data analytics as well, though it offers a lot of built-in analytics.

Basecamp – also a very powerful and feature rich collaboration, project tracking platform.

Was looking for simple project software that provides task dependencies (we are trying to complete a multi-team annual report on time). I did not find anything in the listing. The number one choice given is apparently working on task dependencies.

Comment by Djil on August 29, 2016 at 6:08 am

Awesome article, Rachel. It is good there are project management and time management tools nowadays. It is really important to find the one that will best fit your needs. For my projects, I started using a time tracking tool named screenish ( https://www.screenish.com/#!/home ) and sometimes trello too, depending on the team. Works for me ideally.

Freedcamp seems nice, but there’s no ability to input clients. As a freelancer, it would be nice to have the ability to input projects and assign clients to them. For that, I personally think Thrive Solo is the go to option:

I do strongly believe that the great tools are the ones which have been adopted to suit the needs of a specific niche.

For example, BeeWits, (the new kid on the block in project management tools), is specifically developed for web designers. We’ve set up a number of task templates for creating a web design project. That way, you don’t need to create all of the tasks associated with a project from scratch.

You also know you’ve got it all covered.

Would love it if you gave it a look and tell us what you think, would be really happy to answer any questions you may have.

David

Comment by David Attard on September 20, 2016 at 5:02 am

Hey Rachel,

it seems like project managements tools are all the rage these days 🙂 Besides the ones you listed yourself, I’ve learnt about a bunch of new ones from the comments in this thread – so it’s great that you’ve left this open to comments.

Since we’re on the subject of project management, https://www.beewits.com is another tool which is making quite the hit with web designers, creatives and digital marketers.

Reason being, project task templates are in place for those who don’t want to create a project from scratch everytime. It’s proven a real time-saver for us, and it’s dead-simple, doesn’t get in the way of doing stuff.

David

Comment by Felix Wolfsteller on September 22, 2016 at 3:21 am

The title is wrong and misleading, spreading common misunderstandings. Open Source does not necessary mean Free, either; thus “Free and Open Source” does usually connote something very different. The list is compiled of “free(mium) or open source tools”. But maybe typical project managers still do not understand the whole licensing issue (… “free” as in “free speech” aside).

Comment by Eric Jordy on October 9, 2016 at 1:50 pm

Great list! Even for today! I wouldn’t put freedcamp at #1 though. Especially since they STILL haven’t released a mobile app. Bitrix24 is INSANE! The functionality and accessibility is almost too good to be true for a free package. People need to try bitrix24. You will be blown away! It is basically a free intranet for your company.
As for David up there pimping some beehive…bees knees…dimwits…thing. What part of “free” don’t you understand? A free trial with a purchase requirement at the end is not free software. What a 14 day trial actually is, is a waste of 14 days of wasted time management.

Comment by Troy Cameron on October 14, 2016 at 5:37 am

Great Article Rachel !!! Thank you for sharing..

Comment by Jouni "rautamiekka" Järvinen on October 23, 2016 at 6:34 pm

Asana’s Android and iOS Clients can work offline. On Quora their production manager said they will make Asana fully offline-compatible.

Comment by Kirsten Felbert on November 7, 2016 at 6:04 am

I’ve just come across https://teamweek.com/ while looking for good options. Pros for me is that it’s free for up to 5 members (I’m on a small team) and it integrates with slack, trello & google calendar. It also looks great too!

Comment by Stewart McJamon on November 9, 2016 at 7:36 pm

Hello from Australia!

We use Trello when developing projects ( like christmas marketing projects / promotions for Spanish Turron, jamon blah blah..)
We have hard marketing deadlines after which turron etc promos appear on http://spanishdeli.com.au/